Dead Is The New Alive
by sparksofwrite
Summary: It could never be so easy. Sometimes doctors are smarter than you expect, and sometimes your plans of suicide are complicated by freckled girls in ripped jeans and taped sneakers. Sometimes these things change your life for the better. (Modern mental institution AU. Kinkmeme fill.)
1. on surrender

**TITLE: **Dead Is The New Alive

**AUTHOR: **sparksofwrite

**SUMMARY: **After making an attempt on her own life, Christa Renz is sent to Sina's psychiatric ward. She anticipates a short stay in which she will charm the doctors into letting her out quickly, after which she will kill herself at the earliest convenience. But it could never be so easy: sometimes doctors are smarter than you expect, and sometimes your plans are complicated by freckled girls in ripped jeans and taped sneakers. Sometimes these things change your life for the better.

**A/N:** Ah, psych ward AUs, near and dear to my heart due to ~30 days in a residential program and perhaps 30 more in various partial programs. Many of the scenes in this fic were based on or pulled from my personal experiences in the hospital. (Disclaimer: If you clicked on this expecting a negative portrayal of the mental health system, you'll be disappointed.) This fic will be a mix of humor and serious business. I tried my best.

Titular song is by Emilie Autumn, but the lyrics have little to do with this story.

Trigger warnings for suicide attempts and talk of self harm.

* * *

It's the dead of winter, just days after New Years, when they find Christa curled up in the corner of her room, surrounded by empty pill bottles and shaking uncontrollably.

Three days, some activated charcoal and a psychiatric evaluation later, she's sitting on one of the visitation room couches as her parents and a therapist work out the details of her imprisonment. She lets their voices slide easily in one ear and out the other without comprehension. Unsurprisingly, she concludes with another glance around the room, there's nothing in here she could kill herself with.

Eventually they finish talking and stand up. Christa stands with them and follows as they walk the short distance from the couches to the front door. She holds tightly to the handle of her light suitcase— she has not packed for a long stay.

"Feel better," her mother says mildly, giving her a loose, unreciprocated hug and bumping her cheek against Christa's. Christa's father nods in vague acknowledgement.

"Thanks," Christa says, and they leave, walking out the door and into the snowy night. It might be eleven o'clock or so.

The nurse is wearing a small magnetic key around her neck. She leans down to press it to a keypad next to the solid metal door, and it unlocks with a click. She pulls it wide open and guides Christa inside.

She finds herself in a small cafeteria. There are five tables of varying size, and a few seats per table. There's artwork on the walls that Christa imagines must have been made by patients. She notices a little belatedly that every table and seat is sealed to the floor.

It doesn't look like a prison, but that is probably the point.

The nurse sits her down and, clipboard and paperwork in front of her, begins the interrogation. Christa answers each invasion with a toneless voice— if they're going to find out her deepest secrets, at least she'll keep them guessing as to her emotions.

The many questions take nearly forty minutes to answer. They range from practical (Have you ever had suicidal thoughts- yes, homicidal thoughts- no, abused a person or animal- no) to sexual (Do you masturbate- yes, are you sexually active- no) to drug-related (Have you tried cigarettes- yes, marijuana- no) to questions she never imagined would have any importance in a professional setting (when was your last menstrual period- two weeks ago, have you ever watched an X-rated movie- no).

Finally, though, they're done, and Christa is exhausted. The next fifteen minutes are smeared in her mind and indistinguishable from a dream. She is walked past a small nurse's station, into a bathroom with two female nurses who make her undress and turn her socks inside out. They document her few birthmarks and many scars before allowing her to redress herself. They leave her alone to do this, and she studies herself in the mirror once she's fully clothed.

You'd never guess, just looking at her, that her jeans conceal neat rows of cuts down her thighs. You'd guess that the light lines on her forearms are cat scratches.

You'd be wrong— Christa is well acquainted with razors, and she does not have a cat.

After brushing her teeth with a new, hospital-issued toothbrush (she swears she can still taste the charcoal in her mouth) and washing the day's concealer off her face, she is herded into a dark room next to the nurse's station. It's bizarrely cold. She can feel the draft through her long sleeves and pants and she hugs herself, thanking God that the hospital forced her to wear her Ugg boots rather than shoes with laces.

There's a bed, probably smaller than twin-size, against the wall closest to the door, with another bed against the opposite wall. The one by the door, presumably hers, is dressed with white sheets and a cream-colored blanket. The other bed already has a person in it.

Christa resists the urge to walk towards its sleeping occupant. She can see dark hair, but nothing else— the girl is facing the wall. The shelves between the beds are mostly empty, with the bottom shelf filled with presumably her roommate's haphazardly unfolded clothing. Christa begins to unpack in the dark, using only the light from the open doorway to organize her clothes on the second shelf. This done, she leaves her suitcase in the hallway and collapses into her bed. The sheets are as cold as the rest of the room, and more foreign than happiness.

She sleeps regardless. For five hours.

"Christa? Christa, please wake up."

Opening her eyes, she sees a doctor and a few nurses standing around her. "We need to take blood from you," one of them explains. "It'll just be a minute." She then grabs Christa's arm and begins swabbing at the crease of her elbow with an alcohol wipe, indicating that she does not have a choice.

"They took a lot of blood at the hospital," Christa mumbles irritably. The alcohol stings her nose and before she knows it, they've stuck her with a needle. She looks away as the blood slowly fills the attached tube.

"We need to run a few tests again," the doctor explains simply. The other nurses just stand there, and she can't, in her sleepy state, guess why they are present.

She begins to doze off, even with the pain in her arm, and is only jerked back to reality when they remove the needle and tape a cotton ball over the broken skin.

"Thank you," one of them says. "You can go back to sleep now."

"What time is it?"

"Five. You don't have to be up until nine." They leave without any further interaction, leaving Christa to fall back against the pillow and just barely fall back to sleep when someone pokes her arm.

She sleepily turns her head to meet a face a challenging three inches from her own.

She gasps and pushes herself away. "What the fuck?" The bed across the room is empty.

Her roommate laughs. "Did I scare you?"

"Yes," Christa says. "The fuck are you doing?"

The girl, crouching by Christa's bed, sits back on her heels. The dark room obscures most of her face, but she can make out narrow eyes and short hair. "Wanted to see if you were awake. They didn't tell me I'd be getting a roomie."

"I just got here last night," she mumbles, rubbing her eyes. "What's your name?"

"Ymir." Probably reacting to Christa's questioning look, she elaborates, "Y-M-I-R."

"What kind of name is that?"

"The best kind. Yours?"

"Christa Renz."

"'Kay. What are you in for?"

Christa gathers all the outward-facing anger she can spare (which isn't much, as most of her anger faces within) and replies, "That's my business."

"Tch," Ymir laughs humorlessly. "You're gonna have to tell everyone in the morning. I'd get used to everyone being in your business, if I was you." She stands up, and Christa can now see how tall she is. "I'm going back to bed. Pro tip, they're gonna ask why you're here and what your goal for the day is. Think of something now 'cause nothing is more annoying than someone who can't even figure out what they want to do with their day." With this, she collapses into her own bed and says nothing more.

Christa rolls onto her back and wishes, very much, that she was dead.


	2. on adjustment

**A/N:** I thought we would get to the first group therapy session in this chapter, but Sasha had other plans, so we'll get there in chapter 3. :) You can also find me at sparksofwrite on tumblr for story updates.

* * *

She doesn't know when she managed to sleep again, but soon she's being shaken awake. The nurse leaves when she's confident Christa isn't going to fall right back to sleep, and Christa notices Ymir's bed is neatly made and empty. She closes the door and dresses herself in clean clothes, but she only is allowed about thirty seconds to scour the room for sharp edges (there are absolutely none) before someone starts to knock.

Somehow she'll have to figure out a way to hurt herself. Already the itch has begun to creep its way from her brain into her skin, and she's getting agitated without the ability to cut the feeling away.

Christa opens the door and her eyes meet the front of someone's shirt. She stares for a second before the owner's hand tilts her chin up. "Eyes up here," Ymir says, a little mockingly, a little smug.

The situation registers and Christa reddens, pushing her roommate's hand away. "S-sorry. You're just tall."

"Sure." Ymir grins. She has freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, and her eyes are brown. She's sort of attractive, but her breasts really aren't big enough to warrant staring at, Christa thinks as she brushes past. She doesn't know why Ymir chose to flatter herself.

There's a plastic bin on the ground next to the door. "Christa" is written on the side, and it holds her toothbrush and toothpaste. There are other bins next to a few of the doors in the long hallway, all of them containing various toiletries. She sighs, picks up her bin, and carries it with her into the bathroom.

Once her teeth are brushed, she avoids the mirror and leaves, standing there awkwardly with the plastic bin until a nurse directs her to a closet. The closet is full of similar containers, and she's a little surprised at how many there are— she didn't think so many people would be here at one time. She knows she'll be with only girls. She scans the names and picks out the female ones: "Sasha," "Mina" and "Annie" are the ones that stand out. "Mikasa" and "Connie" sound female, but she's never heard the former and feels unsure about the latter. "Ymir" is the last one her eyes fall on, and by that point she's being nudged out of the way as a tall boy reaches over her and places his container on the top shelf. Quickly, she puts hers on the bottom shelf and scurries away.

"Christa?" As she tries to walk past the nurse's station, they call her over. It has one of those doors that are cut in half, and only the top half is open. It's messy inside, paperwork everywhere, and there's a computer monitor with several different screens. They show empty rooms- a classroom, the cafeteria, the visitation room, and a few rooms with lots of couches that she assumes are used for group therapy.

The nurse behind the door smiles. "You have morning meds. Here," she says as she hands Christa a few tablets of varying size. Christa scowls. They're the same meds she took at home.

"I'm still taking these?" She asks.

"Just until you see Dr. Zoe. They'll probably change your dose, but we don't want to take you off everything yet." The nurse hands her a small cup of water.

Without another word, Christa pops the pills into her mouth, swallows the water, and begins to walk away.

"Christa, please come back here."

She rolls her eyes and turns around.

"Open your mouth and lift your tongue."

Christa wishes looks could kill. She opens her mouth and shows the nurse the pills hidden under her tongue. The nurse patiently hands her another cup of water and waits until Christa has swallowed both the water and the meds.

"Thank you," she says. "You can start lining up, right over there."

There are four girls lined against the wall until Ymir comes out of their room, making five. She goes to stand behind her.

The first girl in line looks endlessly bored to the point of being half asleep. Her blond hair is tied into a bun and she's staring into space. Her sweatshirt has the strings removed, Christa notices, and her sneakers are taped shut. An Asian girl stands next to her, sort of hugging herself despite her heavy-looking hoodie and jeans. A girl with dark hair keeps about a foot of space between the Asian girl, herself, and a brown-haired girl on her other side who wears sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt. She is asking the nurse when the boys will be finished breakfast.

"They'll just be another minute," the nurse says cheerfully. She notices Christa's stare and smiles at her. "Hi, Christa. I'm Petra. Ilse and I will be with you girls for this morning."

She nods, crossing her arms awkwardly. She gets a hard nudge to the ribs, and when she looks up, Ymir is grinning down at her.

"What?" She mutters, rubbing her side.

"You were looking morose," Ymir explains.

Christa leans against the wall, wondering how many times she would have to beat her head against it to kill herself. She wonders whether it would hurt more than this.

* * *

They separate, once they get to the small cafeteria. Ymir moves to one of the smaller tables, made only for three people. The hungry girl in the sweatpants sits with her, and the other three girls move to a larger, six-person table.

Christa stands awkwardly until Ymir gestures her over. She sits in the third seat, not quite knowing what to do.

Ilse, the other nurse, has shiny, dark hair to contrast Petra's orange. She sits with Petra at another small table, next to the door, and checks her clipboard.

"You're all on level 3, right now," she says. "So you can get in line in whatever order you like."

A window in the wall opens up, revealing a kitchen. Christa is the only one who doesn't stand immediately and walk over, and somehow she is not surprised when Ymir nudges her way in front of everyone else. Sighing, she stands up and moves to the back of the line.

A man on the other side of the window is handing out plates, and Christa looks around. There are phones against the wall, four in all, and she wonders when she'll have to call her parents. She wonders if she will have anything to say.

Wordlessly, she takes her plate and carries it back to the table, sitting down.

Christa stares at her dish: two pieces of toast, eggs, two packets of butter, a plastic fork and spoon. She's mystified as to why the spoon is there and is getting ready to ask for a plastic knife when she sees Ymir tearing open her own butter packets and using the handle end of her spoon to spread it on the bread.

"Are we allowed to have knives at all?" She asks Ymir quietly.

"Nah," Ymir says through a mouthful of toast. Christa sighs and pokes at her eggs with her fork.

The girl in the sweatpants is tearing into her food, but she pauses between bites to say, "Your name is Christa?"

"Yeah."

"I'm Sasha," she says.

Christa takes a bite of the eggs, tasting very little salt in their spongy texture. She waits for Sasha to ask more questions, but the other girl instead goes back to her food, clearly more interested in breakfast than unearthing her every secret.

The other three girls are talking quietly at the next table over. Ymir, Sasha and Christa instead remain silent.

"Are you gonna eat that?" After a few minutes, Sasha points to Christa's two slices of toast. She shakes her head, and Sasha eats it quickly.

"Christa, you have to eat more than that," Ilse says disapprovingly from her table.

She ignores the nurse, choosing instead to watch Sasha. She's eating ravenously, and it doesn't look like she's taking any time to taste her food before swallowing it. Once her plate is empty, she pauses for a minute, staring at the table. She quickly mumbles "I have to go to the bathroom" and runs out.

Petra notices, leaving her clipboard on the table and following Sasha out of the room.

Christa watches the two of them go. She looks at Ymir. "What was that about?"

Ymir swallows the eggs in her mouth. "It's easier to get up a lot of food than a little. She does this a lot, but I think they've only caught on the last couple times."

"Get… up?"

"You know. Puke?" She picks up her orange juice carton and takes a drink from it. "You've never tried that?"

She shudders, remembering being forced to throw up after the overdose. "Um. No."

"Good. It's a shitty habit and it makes your teeth gross."

A minute later, a humiliated-looking Sasha trudges through the door, followed by Petra. The nurse is saying, "If you do that again, they're going to move you to an eating disorders clinic. Do you want that?"

"No," Sasha whimpers.

"I didn't think so." Petra sits at her and Ilse's table, scribbling something on her clipboard.

Sasha sits and puts her head on the table. Ymir ignores her completely, finishing her juice, seemingly oblivious to Christa's discomfort or Sasha being close to tears.

Christa sighs, feeling both starved and repulsed at the same time.


	3. on honesty

**A/N:** The last scene of this chapter will continue in chapter 4.

* * *

When everyone has finished breakfast, Ilse and Petra lead them into the next room. There are enough couches against three of the walls to allow for twenty or more patients. The last wall has a large television with a clear plastic shield over the screen.

The other girls sit down, allowing for a lot of personal space. The dark-haired girl in particular sits with her knees drawn to her chest and her arms wrapped around them, rocking back and forth a little. Christa ignores the slightly unnerving behavior and chooses to sit between Ilse and Ymir.

"Okay," Petra says, glancing at her clipboard. "Mikasa Ackerman?"

"Here," the Asian girl says.

"Mina Carolina?"

"Here," answers the girl rocking back and forth.

"Annie Leonhardt?"

The bored-looking blonde says, "Here."

"Sasha Braus?"

"Here."

"Christa Renz?"

"Here," says Christa.

"And Ymir—"

"Riiiight here," Ymir says, raising her hand briefly.

Petra marks something down on the papers in front of her. Ilse says, "Who wants to start? Name, age, why you're here, and your goal for the day," she elaborates, probably for Christa's benefit.

"I'll go," Ymir says. "I'm Ymir. I'm sixteen. I'm here because I won the Hunger Games and now I'm all fucked up and an alcoholic."

"Ymir," Petra sighs.

"And for anger and homicidal thoughts, I guess. You can take the girl out of the Hunger Games but you can't take the Hunger Games out of the girl."

Christa can't help it. She laughs until she's almost in tears, until she realizes she's alone in her hysteria. She tries her hardest until she's quiet again, going red at the amount of faces staring at her.

"See? Someone appreciates me." Ymir sits back and smirks. "Oh. My goal is to get some of my fucking homework done."

"Good," Ilse murmurs, writing something down. She looks to Mina, who is sitting on the other side of Ymir.

"Mina, sixteen. I'm here for anxiety and depression. My goal is to not have to take any Ativan today."

Annie goes next. "I'm Annie, I'm sixteen. Here for bipolar and homicidal thoughts. My goal for today is to go all day without someone pissing me off. So," she clarifies, "That means you guys can fuck all the way off if you're thinking of making me mad."

Mikasa clears her throat. "Mikasa. I'm fifteen. I'm here for PTSD and OCD." Christa doesn't have time to wonder what those diagnoses entail before she continues, "My goal is to get them to let me see Eren."

Ilse sighs quietly, just loud enough that Christa, who sits next to her, can hear.

Sasha says, "Sasha, fifteen, here for OCD, depression and anxiety. I'm going to try really hard not to get sent to the ED unit." Petra nods approvingly.

All eyes land on Christa, and she curses inwardly for not thinking of something to say. Ymir had warned her and everything. She says slowly, "I'm Christa. I'm fourteen, and I'm here because… they diagnosed me a while ago with depression. And then four days ago I tried to kill myself. So." She waits for the shock and the horror, looking around, but Mikasa only inspects her nails, Annie gives her an unimpressed stare, Mina continues to rock in place and Sasha smiles encouragingly. Ymir, when she glances in her direction, winks.

"And your goal," Ilse reminds her gently.

"My goal is to, uh…" She remembers Ymir's comment about being annoyed with people who can't decide what to do with their day, and it makes her panic a little, which only chases coherent thought further from her mind. Cursing her insecurity, she thinks a little simpler. What is something she wants? "I want to get out of here," she says. "That's all."

Ilse hums flatly, writing something down. "Alright, let's go over your schedule for today: after group and lunch, you'll be in the classroom, and then group again and we'll hand you off to the evening nurses around three. Annie and Sasha, you know you're meeting with Dr. Smith at your regular times, and Christa, Dr. Zoe will be around eventually for you. They tend to be a little vague with meeting times, so just be ready at any point."

Christa doesn't have time to respond before the door to the cafeteria opens. A person with brown hair and thick glasses peers into the room, their face brightening when they see her. "Christa Renz?"

"There you go," Ilse laughs. "Dr. Zoe, we'll probably still be here in an hour. Just bring her back here."

"Will do," they say, gesturing Christa over. With an unsure glance around the room, she stands and leaves the room with the doctor.

Once the door is shut behind the two of them, Dr. Zoe turns around, their loose necktie swinging. "Hange Zoe," they say, sticking out their right hand. "Nice to meet you."

Christa shakes their hand a little awkwardly. Their grip is firm, and when they let go, they lead her through the second group therapy room.

Having forgotten for the last hour, she devotes this time to looking around for the cameras. They're hard to miss— they're large and bulbous, stuck in the corner of the ceiling in every room they walk through, and there is one outside the nurse's station, positioned to see down both the boys' and girls' hallways. One thing she does notice, whenever Dr. Zoe pauses to unlock a door with their magnetic key, is that every room has a small red button on the wall.

"What are the buttons for?"

"Hm?" Dr. Zoe glances to where Christa is looking. "Oh, those are crisis buttons. The nurses push them when a situation is getting out of their control." They hold the door open and Christa walks into a part of the building she hasn't seen before. "So if you were to, say, attack another patient or try to hurt yourself, and the nurses couldn't handle it themselves, they just have to press that button and it calls for backup."

"Uh-huh," she murmurs. This wing of the building is inexplicably warm compared to the bedrooms.

"Anyway! My office is over here," they say, leading Christa down another long hallway and into a small room. The first thing she notices is a small fish tank.

"Fish?" Christa asks.

"Sawney and Bean! They're goldfish. Here, you can sit there," they say, taking a stack of charts off a chair and placing them on the floor. She sits in the now-empty chair, taking in her surroundings. It's an absolute mess, this room— papers everywhere, sticky notes on every flat surface. A box of tissues is perched on another pile of charts, and she decides she won't need it.

"Okay," Dr. Zoe says, sitting heavily into their swivel chair, "So, you've been here about twelve hours now, how's it been?"

Christa can't decide what to say for moment. "It's been alright," she manages.

They blink. "We'll try that again. How has it been?"

"I just said it's been alright," Christa says slowly.

"And that's not true."

"What?"

"You're shaking."

What? Christa holds up her right hand and observes the slight tremor. She hadn't noticed that. She sits on her hands and says, "It's just cold."

"You're also sweating."

She scowls.

"Christa," Dr. Zoe says, their head in one hand, "You're a sweet girl. I've spoken to your therapist and heard as much. I can imagine this has been one of the worst experiences of your life, but I'm going to need you to be truthful with me. I don't think you're a liar."

"I wasn't lying," she says weakly. "I just… I don't know what to say. Am I supposed to say I hate it here and I still want to kill myself?"

"If that's the truth, yes."

Christa gapes.

Dr. Zoe tilts their head to the side in apparent thought. "But this is your time. So you can talk about whatever you like."

"I… can?"

"Sure. Eventually we will have to discuss your depression, but I don't see why you can't have a choice in when that is."

Christa thinks. "The less we talk about it, the longer I have to be here?"

They hum affirmatively.

She draws her knees to her chest, reminiscent of the way Mina was sitting. "Okay. Let's talk."


End file.
